Will Steffen Scientist

Will Steffen (born 1947) was the executive director of the Australian National University (ANU) Climate Change Institute. He was a member of the Australian Climate Commission until it was abolished in September 2013. From 1998 to 2004, he was the executive director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, a co-ordinating body of national environmental change organisations based in Stockholm.Steffen completed a BSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Missouri in 1970. The University of Florida awarded him an MSc in 1972 and a PhD in 1975. He is widely published on climate science. His research interests range over climate change and Earth system science issues, with a focus on sustainability. He has written on adapting land use to climate change, bringing human processes into the modelling and analysis of the Earth system, and the history of and future prospects for the relationship between the natural world and humans. Steffen has also been prominent advocating along with Paul Crutzen the concept of the Anthropocene, and initiating along with Johan Rockström an international debate on planetary boundaries and the "safe operating space" for humanity.Steffen served as science adviser to the Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. He has been a member of the advisory board of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and worked with the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council. He was also on an advisory panel in Colorado with the National Center for Atmospheric Research.Currently, Steffen is on the Science Advisory Committee of the APEC Climate Centre in Korea. He is honorary professor at the Copenhagen University's Department of Geography and Geology and visiting researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. He is the chair of the Federal Government's Antarctic Science Advisory Committee, and advises the Australian Government in further roles as scientific adviser to the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency and as expert adviser to the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee. Steffen also sat on the Australian Climate Commission.In 2011, he was the principal author of a government climate report, The Critical Decade, which advocated a tax should be placed on carbon.